Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Firefox has an option to set a Master password to protect sensitive information in your Firefox profile. However, this is limited to only protecting unauthorized users from viewing your saved passwords on websites. The master password doesn’t prevent users from launching Firefox or opening pages or accessing your bookmarks. It also doesn’t prevent users from accessing sites the browser is already logged in to. If you are looking to protect your entire Firefox profile or the browser itself and not just your passwords, we have two add-ons for the purpose.

Before you can use these add-ons, you have to setup a master password. For this, click on the Tools menu and then click on Options. In the Options window, click on the Security icon. Check the box “Use a master password” and then define your password.

StartupMaster is a simple add-on for Firefox that asks for the master password at launch. Every time you start Firefox, you will get a password prompt as shown below, before the main window is displayed. If there is no master password set, the extension does nothing.

StartupMaster also fixes the annoying multiple password prompt issue. Once you are logged in with the master password, Firefox won’t bother you with password prompts when you attempt to view your saved passwords.